1. Technical Field
This application relates to the field of storage devices, and more particularly to the field of migrating data between storage devices.
2. Description of Related Art
It is desirable to be able to move user applications and data among servers and storage arrays in a non-disruptive fashion while the user is actively using the applications and/or data. Although various techniques exist to facilitate non-disruptive data migration, these techniques do not necessarily properly transfer I/O state information. However, many systems rely on metadata, such as I/O state information, for proper operation. For example, in some computer cluster configurations, each of the computers maintains its state (active or passive) and, in some cases, changes its state, based on I/O metadata. Such a system may not operate properly if data was migrated without also properly migrating the metadata.
In addition, in some cases, data being migrated may originate on volumes having corresponding replication relationships, such as local clones, snapshots, synchronous or asynchronous remote copies, etc. However, the replication relationships are not necessarily maintained automatically when the data is migrated. In such cases, a user must manually ensure that the data is migrated to volumes possessing similar replication relationships and/or manually set up the replication relationships at a new site.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a system that can facilitate migrating data as well automatically migrating associated replication relationships and corresponding data.